"Metal casting for jewelry making?" Topic

My wife is looking to get into casting her own jewelery. I've done some resin casting but never metal casting.

I know from experience that many of the tools and materials we buy at "man hobby stores" (hobby shops, big box hardware stores, etc) get dramatically up-priced at the "women craft stores" (pretty much any craft store).

Do you have any good suggestions for resources I could pass on to her, both material and educational?

Check out Micromark. I'm not sure what metals she will use but they have some tools and tutorial information she can use.

Art Jewelry Magazine is pretty good. It's more about blow torches and hammers than it is Fimo and glitter. They have videos up on Youtube but nothing specifically about casting.
When I was looking into making lost wax silver jewelry it didn't seem ridiculously expensive… but I wasn't shopping at 'women's craft stores'.

Spin casting will be the same but if she can do drop casting it's fairly straight forward.

Check out the Prince August site link for a general overview and the smooth on site smooth-on.com

Look up lost wax casting.

Lost wax casting has been a traditional way of making jewelry with investment metals. Spincasting is also capable of mass production but the designes cannot have a lot of intracacies without tearing out due to severe overhangs. Broaches and necklace bobs best for spincasing; maybe less so for intricare rings.

We did some spin casting of medals and necklace bobs without any problems. But for jewelry and at home, suggest lost wax be explored, first.

Tom

There is a newer material out there called precious metal clay. It can be gotten in silver, gold, copper, bronze or steel. It handles like clay but once it has dried and been fired it is that metal. Lost wax and centrifuge casting is great but the equipment is costly.

Rio grande and swest are two companies that carry pmc and casting equipment in the USA.

M-

my wife is a goldsmith , she carves the waxes and has them molded and cast by a company that specializes in that . if there isn't someplace near you that does that you can probably find one who does it by courier .

She should check out Rio Grande Albuquerque

riogrande.com

They are definitely one of the best sites for jewelry makers and artists. Loads of info and equipment for casting precious metals, which BTW is pretty different from the white metal casting setups used for white metal alloy figures. This place is a huge step up from both the Guy Hobby Store and the Girl Craft Store.